OK, I've been putting this off for a while now, but that's been down more to time than eagerness.
As you will know by now, Deal or No Deal is a game of pure chance. Not total 'gambling', but plenty of luck is involved. The skill in the game is knowing when to stop, in my opinion. When you deal, you have a 50/50 chance of it being the right thing to do (by which I mean, the game crashing afterwards, or not).
Naturally, with a game like this, not every game is going to be perfect. And that brings us back to 'schaudenfraude', and the selectivist approach to the game some people have. I already touched on this briefly in my post just over a month ago on schadenfreude in DOND, but it does bear repeating here.
There are some people who believe that, on DOND, gambling, and opening your box regardless, is the best way to play the game. These people usually ignore games where blues are in the player's box, and only focus on games where Power 5 sums are on the table, whether the player wins it or not. So, a player winning a big sum from the box are labelled 'brave', players who deal and miss out on big sums in the box are labelled 'cowards', regardless of the state of the board when they dealt. If a player takes a huge gamble, and wins the lower sum, they will still receive praise for 'going for it', and not for 'chickening out'.
The best example of this has to be Corinne Davies' game from December 2009. Corinne was driven throughout her game by her desire to buy a vintage Bentley, which only the £250,000 would buy. Unlike some, she was not bluffing when she said she was after the £250,000, and, despite some very generous offers, playing to a final two of 1p and the £250,000. The Banker offered her £88,000, which pretty much anyone else would take, but Corinne declined it! After a big build up, Noel opened her box to reveal 1p!
The response from most people was that Corinne was incredibly greedy, and deserved to crash after declining £88,000. However, some people defended her for not giving up on her ambition, despite being faced with all-or-nothing.
This had led me to believe that, overall, there is a huge preference for gambling over caution. People frequently express this by quoting Noel's frequent mantra of 'You're Only Here Once', although, given that Olly Murs played regular DOND in 2007 before he became famous, and then played Celebrity DOND earlier this year, that is not necessarily true anymore!
Another celebrity game, that of Louis Walsh, is a great example of this 'preference'. Mr Walsh reached a final two of £3,000 and the £250,000, resulting in an offer of £70,000. Large numbers of supporters, including Jedward(!), urged him to go for it. But, he resisted this, and dealt. And it's a good thing he did too, as £3,000 was in the box.
But the fact that lots of people were urging him to go for it gives further backing to this 'preference' theory that I have. Naturally, had Mr Walsh had the £250,000, all the people praising him for playing the perfect game would have been a lot less impressed.
Rarely, though, do we see the same people who criticise a player for dealing too soon castigate another player for gambling too far. It's usually the same people. However, there are some people with, what I have termed, a 'selectivist' approach, which I expanded on a bit more in my schadenfreude article.
This also extends to when people claim what they would have done in a certain game. There has not been much evidence of this lately, but there are some people who alter their gameplay tactics to ensure they will have won the max from the game (whether that be opening the box to the highest sum of the game, or dealing the peak offer and being justified). Mercifully, such behaviour is rare nowadays.
That's all I have to say on this matter for now. More articles of this sort will go up a) when I think of something to write about, and b) when I find the time to do it.
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